The court's opinion, written by Judge Pierre Leval, a highly influential scholar of fair use, explains how Google's copying entire texts, to digitalize them so that the public (users) can search for key words and see displays of snippets of the text surrounding them, "is transformative within the meaning of Campbell." He explains more specifically:

Google's making of a digital copy to provide a search function is a transformative use, which augments public knowledge by making available information about Plaintiffs' books without providing the public with a substantial substitute for matter protected by the Plaintiffs' copyright interests in the original works or derivatives of them. The same is true, at least under present conditions, of Google's provision of the snippet function.